What about Hanford?

By Nick Touran

One thing people often turn to in discussing nuclear energy a clean energy source
is the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in central Washington. Here,
you’ll learn about what happened at Hanford, why there’s a large cleanup project
today, and that it is largely unrelated to commercial nuclear energy.

How did the Hanford site get started?

During the Manhattan Project in World War 2, American scientists knew of two
potential ways to make materials that would explode as nuclear weapons: enriching
uranium to nearly 100% 235U or producing plutonium in special
nuclear reactors. Since they didn’t know which one would work, they tried both.
Enrichment facilities were built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and special plutonium-producing
reactors were built at Hanford, WA. Both approaches ended up working. After
that and into the Cold War, weapons production capabilities grew
at Hanford, and at least 9 weapons production reactors operated there through the years.

What happened at Hanford?

The plutonium-production process that occurred at Hanford involved irradiating nuclear
fuel in a reactor, melting it down in a big acid vat, using chemistry to extract
just the plutonium, and fabricating the plutonium into weapons. The giant vats
of liquid radioactive acid were a waste product and dealing with them was
not the priority of the Cold War (keeping up with the USSR was). So
instead of implementing a nice waste-treatment process, the vats just sat there
and the sludge was left for later generations. That’s what we’re dealing with now.

Does this mean we shouldn’t do commercial nuclear?

Of course not. Rather than melting down spent fuel and putting it in a vat,
today’s commercial nuclear plants put their irradiated fuel in extremely solid and safe
dry cask storage where there is no risk of anything radioactive leaking out.
The spent fuel is solid, after all. The leaks at Hanford are unrelated
to commercial nukes.

What about reprocessing?

There are some benefits to recycling used commercial nuclear fuel, such
as reducing the total amount of nuclear waste and using our resources
more efficiently. To do this, you do need to melt the fuel down
and do some degree of purification, similar to what happened at Hanford.
The difference is, well-designed reprocessing facilities like La Hague
in France include a stable
waste form (e.g. vitrification) from the beginning. If you think it
through, you can reprocess cleanly and safely. In haste of WW2 and the
Cold War, waste forms were an afterthought.